Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Tuesday described the BJP’s win in Tripura as an ‘ideological victory’ whose importance should not be underestimated by the party and others.

Modi also asked the BJP and its parliamentarians to keep working hard and take advantage of the party’s winning spree to advance its ideology and reach across the country.

“Some people are trying to undermine the victory by suggesting Tripura is a small state. No state or victory is small,” a BJP MP quoted Modi as saying in the weekly parliamentary party meeting.

“This is an ideological victory,” he added.

Tripura was ruled by the CPI(M), BJP’s ideological rival, for 25 years. The saffron party won the state with a majority on Saturday.

The Prime Minister said the BJP won only one assembly seat in Kerala before it went on to trounce the Left in its bastion of Tripura. He also paid tributes to nine BJP workers who were killed in alleged political violence in Tripura during the run-up to the state polls.

With the Karnataka assembly polls round the corner, Modi told the gathering that the party would need to work hard to maintain its winning streak and asserted that there was an atmosphere of hope and expectation in the country, parliamentary affairs minister Ananth Kumar said.

The Prime Minister asserted that the party should endeavour to live up to people’s expectations as it rejoices in its electoral win and asked MPs to take to the masses the details of the Union Budget that was aimed at building a new India.

Modi, who was greeted at the meeting with the slogan ‘Jeet hamari jaari hai, ab Karnataka ki baari hai’ (Our winning run continues, now is the turn of Karnataka), also told MPs that they would be invited for an interaction with BJP chief Amit Shah at the party’s newly built headquarters soon.

The BJP’s parliamentary party office secretary Balasubrahmanyam Kamarsu had arranged scarves from the three north-eastern states and ‘prasad’ from the Kamakhya Temple in Guwahati for the party MPs at the meeting.